Kayal (Tamil, 2014)

A wandering duo is wrongly suspected for aiding a girl fleeing from her marriage and held by the thugs at the girl’s household who use the housemaid as bait to get clues from them. That is when the hero falls for the maid (of course, at first sight!). He shakes up the scene with a proposal that plays on the girl’s mind even after the hero is set free. They go in search of each other & when they meet on the 26th of Dec, 2004 they witness the devastating Tsunami!

What’s Hot

The cast is totally fresh & has performed admirably. Aaron, played softly by the debutant hero Chandran and his friend make us envy them for their approach to life. Kayal, played by an angelic Anandhi – a debutant again, emotes her helplessness, confusion & love quite well. The supporting household cast shines in spite of all in it being newbies.

The idea of presenting the design that fate is & how it can play games with people is a nice knot.

The visuals canned by Vetrivel Mahendran, aided amply by the spectacular locations, are magnificent & in Imman’s music, we get to listen a couple of hummable numbers.

There are some scenes that are worth highlighting – The scene where the grandma explains how communication happens when in love & the visualization of the Tsunami sequence.

What’s Not

Prabhu Solomon disappoints hugely with the screenplay that rambles all over the place with humour and emotions spread across at inappropriate places testing the patience of the viewer. Love at first sight is a tricky thing to write & with little backing later in the film, the movie is unable to get back the viewer, who it loses pretty early.

The scene where the hero spurts out his love for the girl with the girl’s feelings taken for granted is a classic example of chauvinism (even though he is shown to repent for it in a simple dialogue later) & the title being the female lead’s name makes it a big irony!

With not much to tell through the story, the scenes get more than repetitive and characters introduced late in the film like the Volleyball teacher, the butler etc. induce pain & irritation.

Badges

Verdict

In Kayal, the vacillating screenplay adds to the pointless story in testing your patience. From Mynaa to Khumki to Kayal, it has been one mighty fall for Prabhu Solomon & one hopes that he can think of other genres to make films on, as he seems to have lost steam with his beloved theme of ‘Unconditional Love’.